I think exaggerations can be avoided. "The Ts[entsralny] K[omittee] is throwing out or is ready to throw a healthy cannon overboard," you write2. Is this not an immeasurable exaggeration? To throw Trotsky overboard - because that is what you are hinting at, otherwise it cannot be interpreted - is the height of absurdity. If you don't think I'm already hopelessly stupid, how can you think that?????. The boys are bloodshot in the eyes...

Private meeting? I agree, but I'd advise against it. Shouldn't we wait 2-3 days? 1) To probe the ground first and 2) to ensure the meeting doesn't explode passions. I won't swear, for sure. What about the others?

Lenin.

The first paragraph was published - "Kommunist", 1991, No. 5, p. 36.

Fond 2, op. 2, d. 1239 - autograph.

1The note could have been written only after L.B.Kamenev's meeting with Lenin on July 14 and earlier than July 18, because on this day Lenin in a note to Stalin reminds: "that Kamenev will answer about Trotsky after the general meeting" (see doc. 398). When published in the journal, the document is dated incorrectly - after October 2, 1922, due to Lenin's return to Moscow from Goroki.

2Kamenev's note to Lenin has not been tracked down. What episode of relations in the Politburo Kamenev had in mind is not precisely known. Perhaps the friction that arose was connected with Lenin's proposal of July 12 to reduce the functioning members of the Politburo of the Central Committee for the summer (see doc 394).